Suzhou Silk Museum

Patrimoine culturel

The Suzhou Silk Museum opened in 1991 near the North Temple Pagoda scenic area and was China's first museum devoted to silk. Its history and modern galleries hold several thousand textile pieces, displaying silk treasures across the dynasties alongside live demonstrations of mulberry growing, silkworm rearing and traditional looms. The museum is the protecting institution for Songjin brocade weaving, its founder Qian Xiaoping a national bearer of the craft, and here the kesi and Songjin arts of Suzhou can be seen in full.

Visite: Stepping inside, the journey from a strand of silk to a length of brocade unfolds: you can watch artisans weave kesi inch by inch on old wooden looms by the 'continuous warp, broken weft' method, study the layered patterns of Songjin, and feel the weaving heritage and Jiangnan aesthetic of a city that has been a silk capital for two thousand years.